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 Saints Row is a franchise that started out as a fairly straight-faced, mean-spirited game about street gangs or something (I don't know, I didn't have an XBox at the time) and ended up being about having superpowers and defeating Satan. With nowhere else to really go from there, Developer Volition has effectively decided to hit the reset button on the franchise with the release of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgjzDJA1o1E The game, shockingly, is neither a New York or a Los Angeles stand-in, or even a nondescript Midwestern city. Instead the map is set in the American Southwest in the fictional city of Santo Ileso, which is a bit of a hybrid of Las Vegas, Reno, and El Paso. I'm sure there's a lot of Arizona in there too. The game dropped on August 23 and was met with, generously, mixed critical reception. Some combination of story, mission design, and gameplay were cited as shortcomings depending on who you listened to; one thing they all agreed on was that the game was buggy as hell. Anyway, the game is out now, the bugs and notable bits of dialogue have been fully metabolized by internet, and now it seems likely that the game will be forgotten before too long. Have you played this game? What did you think? Is it the GOTY, the WOTY, or somewhere in between? What game represented the peak for the franchise creatively- Saints Row 2, or Saints Row 2 where you select the Cockney Accent for your boss? General Dog fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Sep 6, 2022 |
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Sep 6, 2022 02:56
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I've been enjoying it as a fan of every game but the original, which was just a GTA clone and before Volition decided to make their games fun to actually play but even I even finished that game once. I like trying to scale back from the over the top tone of 3 back to 2, but this doesn't mean a lot of mercy killing in the rain or anything, you just don't start off parachuting into a penthouse while Kanye West plays. Visually the game is gorgeous. I've seen some people try to claim the earlier games were prettier and... no. Steelport especially was all lifeless brick but Santo Ileso is a lot of fun to drive around in and the photo taking side deal of roadside attractions and weird statues and such gives the place that southwest tourist trap vibe of an Albuquerque. The controls are fine. The perks this time around coming from finishing challenges and not missions which took some getting used to and some are irritatingly locked pretty deep, like dual wielding pistols and SMGs. The characters are fun. People are mad, I guess, because none of them are white and they rob check cashing places and if there's anything weird gamers like to do it's hurl themselves in front of anything poking fun at capitalism. I've gotten some genuine laughs at the dialogue. Nobody's sung a duet to a Biz Markie song yet, which admittedly is a shame. Bug wise... I dunno, I've gotten two crashes to desktop and some other minor stuff here and there but nothing that I don't encounter in about any other AAA title that drops these days. I'm gaming on a semi-high end PC so that might help? My biggest glitch is that often after using the Death Blossom skill where you jump around with two SMGs the SMGs remain stuck to your hands. I do have some quibbles, not so much with the story but how it's structured. I think the ideal way to do it was in SR2 where you'd do a mission in a gang's territory, you'd take over that little chunk, get a cutscene and do it again. This has the thing of the later games where you can buy up most of the city before moving onto the city which narratively feels weird but on the other hand this is the game where I can put a rocket-powered football onto my car and launch it into the air so who cares. Game fun. Solid 8.5 I guess?
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Sep 6, 2022 03:34
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Has there been any indication of upcoming patches to fix issues people have been having? I feel like that'll be a factor on when I pick up the game.
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Sep 6, 2022 03:42
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Just to kick things off (and if nobody else has anything to say about this game I understand)- I put probably 30-35 hours into this game and finished it, and my biggest takeaway is that it just feels unfinished. I don't really even mean that in the bugs sense- I had to restart a couple of missions due to bugs, and I encountered busted takedown animations here and there, and then maybe had a handful of other instances where mission prompts didn't show up, or were incorrect, and I think I had one instance where my HUD just disappeared and I had to restart- but overall I found it as playable as most releases are going to be on week 1; it seems like a lot of the truly game-breaking stuff clocked by reviewers was fixed in the day 1 patch. No, by unfinished I mean more that it feels like the devs built a very nice open world and created a tremendous amount of customization for the player character and for the guns and for the vehicles, and then they lacked either the resources or the time or creative spark to do anything interesting at all when it came to the gameplay. You drive to a place and you shoot some people, or you shoot some people and then you drive to a place, and that's the game. That's the story missions, that's the loyalty missions, and that's the lion's share of the side ventures (about half of which you have to complete to progress the story). The shooting and the driving are both serviceable. They're not unpleasant or a pain in the rear end, but they're not so good that you fail to notice how repetitive the gameplay loop is. I don't find the characters as unlikable or the writing as "cringe" as some of the games' biggest critics have; but outside of a few moments I rarely found the game authentically funny or clever. Comedy is very subjective of course, but if it doesn't hit for you, that's more or less death for this game since the gameplay is so rote and so repetitive and in need of anything to possibly spice it up.
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Sep 6, 2022 03:47
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A note on story- towards the end of the game there's a level that seemingly every AAA game seemed to have for a while where the player character is at a low point and has a vision where they walk through a creepy netherworld and review their decisions and relationships from the course of the game. Seems like it's a trope that could be ripe for parody, but it's played pretty straight. In this one, the boss encounters objects representing the main crew members- a car, a whiteboard, and a waffle iron. The waffle iron has been a running joke over the course of the game, while the car and the whiteboard are callbacks to single missions. It was at this moment, as I strained to remember what the significance of the car and the whiteboard ever were, that I thought to myself, "wow, we really didn't do much or learn much about these people over the course of this game, did we? Again, I don't think the characters are particularly annoying, apart from a few moments of clunky dialogue, but it's kind of hard to explain the extent to which nothing really happens in this game- how frictionless the rise of the Saints is and what non-entities all of the rival gangs end up being.
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Sep 6, 2022 03:56
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I hate saying this as a fan of the series, but I'm looking forward to checking it out when it is $15 and patched. From what I've seen they've taken the edge off Saints Row and replaced it with #relatable humor and... nothing? I want Volition and B+ games to have a future but this ain't it.
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Sep 6, 2022 04:07
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chuckelZ posted:From what I've seen they've taken the edge off Saints Row and replaced it with #relatable humor and... nothing? I think there's the sliver of a good idea in setting up the Saints Crew as sitcom characters (the premise and some of the dialogue when we first meet everybody seem to suggest that's the intent); the problem is that a sitcom requires a) jokes and b) regular friction between the main characters, neither of which the game ever really delivers. As it is, the crew dynamic kind of feels like a joke setup with no punchline.
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Sep 6, 2022 04:21
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I'm having fun with it. I want to play it, but the missions I'm up to in the story are bugged for me & I can't do anything. That's literally the bug, I start a mission and the game acts like I unplugged my controller and refuses to respond to any inputs. The fetch quests in the vein of "find weird looking thing, take a picture, unlock a fast travel point or an item for your crib" is really working for me, but if that's not your wheelhouse this isn't going to be super fun for you. The writing.....is bad. The biggest issue for me is that it fails at the balancing act between "this is a reboot, we have to introduce every character in their entirety to the player because they have nothing to go on but what we explicitly tell them" and "the PC is roommates with these characters, apparently has been for some time and therefore should know something beyond the pure basics of their personalities." There's a reason Neenah has that project car, there's a reason Kev seems to randomly give a poo poo about fast food kid's meal toys, but that information is given to the player in what amounts to throwaway lines delivered either mid-mission or well after the point where it would make previous plot points make sense & have a sense of gravitas. I appreciate that the side missions finally hit the balance between SR3/4's "Here's some fuckin goofy poo poo" & SR1/2's "Here's a quick cutscene to give explanation to why we're doing this otherwise nonsensical thing in order to make money/gain local attention/respect". The physics engine is janky as gently caress, but so far it's more fun than frustrating IMO. I don't really enjoy the helicopter theft missions because I simply cannot get a handle on how you're supposed to steer the drat things, but having literally anything launch into the air if it touches the water spewing up from a broken fire hydrant never ceases to amuse me.
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Sep 6, 2022 04:56
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Yeah credit where credit is due, making cars explode in this feels great
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Sep 6, 2022 08:30
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Even if the game wasn’t buggy as all get out there are several issues that another delay wouldn’t have fixed - the subpar shooting and driving, the unfunny writing, the lame characters, and the fact that it comes from the GTA4 school of mission design where absolutely everything is drive here, kill these guys, escape two-star wanted level. The city is at least better than Steelport but that’s a low bar to clear, and I’m glad character customization is approaching SR2 standards again but after that and the cars there’s not a ton you can do to really make the Saints your own. I feel bad for Volition, I really do - I think after Agents of Mayhem flopped they followed their loss with another no-win scenario. A reboot was the correct move, but probably practically nobody who worked on the first four (4.5?) games is still at the studio anymore, and a lot of this game’s underlying issues are just failing to hit the basics of a sandbox game. They pared down the Saints formula to its base elements and that would be a pretty good idea if they did so to absolutely nail them, but they didn’t come close. THQ claimed they were pleased by pre-orders but we’ll see how successful it was in the long run. I didn’t want this game to flop, let alone be actually bad, but here we are. Part of me wonders how much the negative reception to the game is fans who grew up on SR3 and 4 feeling betrayed by going back to the tone of SR1 and 2, but there’s more than enough wrong with the game that it’s fair to criticize it for before we even factor that in.
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Sep 6, 2022 09:22
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I played the game prior to release for review, and I really liked it. Most of the bugs were just amusing (although there were side activities I couldn't finish because not all the missions activated for me), I really enjoyed the writing after a stumbling start, and the gameplay was definitely retro but to me in a good way. I expected absolutely nothing going in and was very pleasantly surprised. But I would wait for bug fixes before buying, probably.
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Sep 6, 2022 11:57
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Mmm. I was worried that the humour wouldn't be that great. Think I would wait until it's patched.
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Sep 6, 2022 12:21
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Yeah, the gameplay has been pretty fun in terms of the shooting and building a perk loadout. Once you’ve got the right set of skills and perks rolling combat isn’t frustrating at all. I will agree that they absolutely could have done more with the friend characters, and the writing feels like a serial-numbers-filed-off version of Archer. Definitely could have done more to flesh out the story beyond the basic, you need to take down three gangs to take control of the city stuff we’ve seen three times previous to this. I did like the choice to ground progression in the side activities, which again could have been elevated by making it more than take vehicle to point A, shoot enemies at point A, then go to point B.
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Sep 6, 2022 14:00
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Pirate Jet posted:THQ claimed they were pleased by pre-orders but we’ll see how successful it was in the long run. I didn’t want this game to flop, let alone be actually bad, but here we are. Part of me wonders how much the negative reception to the game is fans who grew up on SR3 and 4 feeling betrayed by going back to the tone of SR1 and 2, but there’s more than enough wrong with the game that it’s fair to criticize it for before we even factor that in. I remember 2 being sometimes absolutely vicious in what happened in the plot, did the plot in the reboot ever actually reach this same tone? Like Carlos' fate was so grim. There were times when SR2 refused to pull any punches.
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Sep 6, 2022 14:35
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SpiritOfLenin posted:I remember 2 being sometimes absolutely vicious in what happened in the plot, did the plot in the reboot ever actually reach this same tone? Like Carlos' fate was so grim. There were times when SR2 refused to pull any punches. Oh, nah. Nothing like a mercy killing in the rain. (Which I did dressed as a hot dog.)
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Sep 6, 2022 15:06
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I'm reminded of Cyberpunk's release in that I am really, truly enjoying the hell out of this game but also recognize that it is deeply flawed and impossible to recommend at full price in its current state. The gameplay is ... fine. Combat is very much Saints Row combat, which has never been extraordinary. I wish they'd have iterated on it more, but the additions of perks and melee super moves to bring back health are well done and add a little bit of depth where otherwise there'd be none. It's a very small thing, but I adore that there's a "hit this to shoot the explodey thing with people near it" button. The complaints of "you drive somewhere, you shoot things, you drive somewhere else" are well founded, but I kind of expect that going in with just about every open-world game at this point because it's something that hasn't been built upon in, I dunno, 10+ years. Gonna disagree with folks who don't like the driving. I love how cars handle in this. For me, they're just the right mix of tight and floaty. When combined with the infinite drifting (which is a hilarious and bizarre addition), you're able to whip vehicles all over the place and it rules. That's how it feels to me, though, and obviously everybody's gonna have different thoughts on it. The Raycaster continues to be my car of choice in the Saints Row universe. I'll defend the writing, to an extent. It's nowhere near the awful, awkward, stilted cringe-fest reviewers and commentators have made it out to be. In no universe is this bad video game writing. Could it be better? Absolutely. Could these new characters be more fleshed out? Absolutely. Are we missing some of the strong moments like we got in SR2? Absolutely. But is it awful? No. I'll push back on the people who claim our introduction to this crew is too sudden and shallow, because it seems like people forget our introductions to Pierce and Shaundi were fully uneventful "pick this person up in a parking lot for a random mission but they end up sticking around" situations. It's what those relationships evolved into that made those characters what they were, and that's kinda what feels like is missing here. I like what they're trying to do with this crew, I really do. I think it's a fresh approach, and it's maybe even a bit brave when you know they knew they were going to take a mountain of poo poo from edgelords who just wanted more of the crudeness and insanity of SR3 (note: I fuckin' loved SR3 and have bought it and played it in full on like three different platforms at this point). I just wish they'd pushed things further along. The bugginess is ... whatever, I guess. I'm on the Series X version and I've run into a litany of issues, some huge, some very small. I've never been the type to care too much about that, but it has been a point of frustration a few times. It shouldn't have released in this state, but that's rarely a developer thing and more frequently a publisher thing so I'm hoping Volition's got their poo poo together and planning to support this thing properly. All that being said, I think this is a better game than it has gotten credit for. It's not great, and I don't think it'll get there even with plenty of post-release support, but it's absolutely not the dumpster fire folks have made it out to be. I suspect in a few years' time, when this game's brought up you're going to have a bunch of folks who picked it up for a $20 Black Friday sale saying "that thing was alright."
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Sep 6, 2022 15:10
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One thing that bothers me is how little sense of escalation there is as you take over the city and take down the different factions. I guess you actually have fights against the leaders of the Idols and the Panteros, but there's so little fanfare that I didn't actually realize I was who I was fighting when they came up; they just seemed like any other grunt with a lot of armor. We spend no time with the gangs, we get nothing of their reaction to the rise of the Saints, nothing.
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Sep 6, 2022 15:20
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That's definitely an issue, yeah. With previous iterations you had identifiable threats and knew very specifically who you were getting into the poo poo with and what the stakes were. I don't really feel that here. To go back to the main characters for a sec: While I'll reiterate I like them and how they're written, I also bump up against the fact that they just ... don't feel like a crew of thieves and murderers? I know it's not unique to this game to have a huge gap between the character in the cutscenes and the character in the missions/gameplay, but that aspect of it feels pretty off.
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Sep 6, 2022 15:30
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Samovar posted:Mmm. I was worried that the humour wouldn't be that great. Think I would wait until it's patched. YMMV naturally, but I got more good laughs from this one than Saints Row 4.  
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Sep 6, 2022 15:31
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Toaster Beef posted:To go back to the main characters for a sec: While I'll reiterate I like them and how they're written, I also bump up against the fact that they just ... don't feel like a crew of thieves and murderers? I know it's not unique to this game to have a huge gap between the character in the cutscenes and the character in the missions/gameplay, but that aspect of it feels pretty off. This is a huge problem, yes. Like I said, the basic premise that you have a sitcom cast who all happen to be able to murder without remorse and build a criminal empire possibly has some potential. Seems like the two approaches the story could take would be to make an earnest effort to reconcile that contrast, or just to hang a lantern on how outlandish it is. The game doesn’t really do either of those things (Outside of a pretty funny gag at the beginning where the boss comes home and hangs their pistol on the coat race), so the tension between these people’s laid back, fairly wholesome personalities and the fact that they’re constantly killing without a care in the world just sits there, neither reconciled nor harvested for humor.
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Sep 6, 2022 16:12
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I've been enjoying this a lot. Very glad that most of the weird bugs have been fixed at this point. I don't have any problem with the shooting or the driving, especially once I upgraded my primary guns and vehicles. Humor-wise, "they took away the edge." Listen, that's a bullshit argument for misanthropic teens. I've gone back and read some the threads I used to post in GBS back in the day and I'm loving glad the edge is gone. It's still funny, it's still *very* irreverent, we just have FB's instead of Freckle Bitch's now. I've been sidetracked from the main quest by unlocking ventrues, and one of the complaints against this game that I will gladly agree with is that some of these side missions are way too repetitive. Did we really need to find 13 toxic waste trucks (you can actually hijack anyone you see, not just the map markers) Did we really need to steal 10 different cars? With some of these missions, if there's no variety there's no reason to do it more than two or three times. We did not need that many drug drops, but poo poo like that is just part of open world games, I guess. Over all though, game is good. It very much went back to SR2 for tone and setting, but that's fine, it gives the next one the ability to push the wackiness further. I did actually just find this thread because I wanted to whine about a new bug. In the cutting edge material ventrue, the Mirror material didn't pop for me. The icon is still on the map and the pool float has a greyed out border when I try to photo it again. edit: my boss is wearing an antelope skull and bloody hazmat suit and wielding a dinosaur leg bone filled with a galaxy.
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Sep 7, 2022 15:10
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Soonmot posted:Humor-wise, "they took away the edge." Listen, that's a bullshit argument for misanthropic teens. I've gone back and read some the threads I used to post in GBS back in the day and I'm loving glad the edge is gone. It's still funny, it's still *very* irreverent, we just have FB's instead of Freckle Bitch's now. I'm sure there are certain edgy lads who are heartbroken that Freckle Bitch's and Rim Jobs and all the pimping minigames are gone now, but I think the stronger complaint is that, having dispensed with all that plus the dildo bat/gimps/furries humor of SR 3 and 4 (which I won't especially miss either) the game fails to establish a comedic voice of its own.
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Sep 7, 2022 16:18
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Soonmot posted:I did actually just find this thread because I wanted to whine about a new bug. In the cutting edge material ventrue, the Mirror material didn't pop for me. The icon is still on the map and the pool float has a greyed out border when I try to photo it again. I'm absolutely loving this game. It feels incredibly close to SR2 in a lot of ways, with a lot of SR3 wacky fun.
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Sep 7, 2022 16:20
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I don't really get the tonal comparison between Saints Row 2 and this new one at all; beyond "neither game has dildo bats or Professor Genki." I turned around and booted up SR2 once I finished the new game, and for better or worse it is mean as hell. Not just the juvenile humor, but the Saints doing pretty horrible stuff. They shoot a judge in the first mission in Stillwater and then slaughter a bunch of homeless people in the second. There is not much effort put into making our protagonists sympathetic.
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Sep 7, 2022 17:01
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I'm curious, have they changed the driving camera with this game or are they still insistent on having an awful camera in vehicles?
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Sep 7, 2022 17:16
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K8.0 posted:I'm curious, have they changed the driving camera with this game or are they still insistent on having an awful camera in vehicles? Angle was a little low for my taste but not terrible.
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Sep 7, 2022 17:28
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General Dog posted:I'm sure there are certain edgy lads who are heartbroken that Freckle Bitch's and Rim Jobs and all the pimping minigames are gone now, but I think the stronger complaint is that, having dispensed with all that plus the dildo bat/gimps/furries humor of SR 3 and 4 (which I won't especially miss either) the game fails to establish a comedic voice of its own. The furries are still there, I saw one walking around down the street. I also have skins for my weapons like the dinosaur bone, foam finger for the pistol along with star lord's blaster. Either my shot gun or machine gun can be an umbrella. You can still buy a full gimp suit at the sex shop. I don't even think there's much a conflict between the core groups personalities and that they're supposed to be killers. Aside from Johnny Gat, the old companions were super chill too. I guess I can see where it fails to establish a voice of it's own, but I'd rather have that than all the mean spirited poo poo you listed in your later post. Wungus posted:That's not a bug, the mirror material is a broken mirror in that pool. The float is a collectable. lol ty!
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Sep 7, 2022 17:30
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As someone who’s never played a Saints Row game before I’m actually quite enjoying this one in spite of all its flaws but I can’t play it because the Take Me to Church mission is bugged and gets stuck on an eternal loading screen every time I finish it 
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Sep 8, 2022 02:10
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I'm coming up on the finale of the story and the most frustrating thing thus far is that side hustles seemingly erase your weapon inventory. love diving into a mission to find i am fending off max notoriety police and gang with six stagecoach rifle bullets, an un-upgraded melee weapon & a handful of explosives instead of a full weapon wheel. I will say that as a pleasant surprise, the dustlander crossbow is fuckin LETHAL. power it up and 2-3 shots take down helicopters. meanwhile shooting a person with it causes then to twirl around and Wilhelm scream while pantomiming their demise.
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Sep 12, 2022 21:05
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erases weapon customization sometimes, too!
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Sep 12, 2022 21:32
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it better be a drat bug that there's a radio station you can build that doesn't actually show up on radios in the game every station in the game fuckin sucks, there are like 5 good songs and 3 of them get used as mission soundtracks
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Sep 13, 2022 01:43
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oldskool posted:it better be a drat bug that there's a radio station you can build that doesn't actually show up on radios in the game You can make your own custom playlist from those 5 good songs and listen to that.
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Sep 13, 2022 07:06
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I spent most of my playthrough listening to Hardcore History in the background
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Sep 13, 2022 07:08
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I'm still waiting for patches because I'm over having to reboot the game after every mission or so so mission triggers actually trigger.
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Sep 13, 2022 07:28
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Have they announced patches? Or anything?
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Sep 13, 2022 16:06
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Croccers posted:I'm still waiting for patches because I'm over having to reboot the game after every mission or so so mission triggers actually trigger. PC? I haven't had any freezeups or animation fuckups since the last patch on PS5
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Sep 14, 2022 23:26
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I thought it was a little odd that the wing suit wasn’t utilized more during story missions; it makes me wonder whether it was a case where that mechanic was added fairly late in development or whether it was originally supposed to be a bigger part of the game but they were unsatisfied with how it worked out. For my part, I thought the wing suiting was okay, with the caveat that the “bouncing off pedestrians” mechanic is pretty tough when there are so few pedestrians.
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Sep 15, 2022 01:43
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The level of destructibility on display is something special Unfortunately every actual joke is immediately deflated by unnecessary extra dialogue, though that's not exactly a unique problem for the franchise
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Sep 15, 2022 01:54
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Overbite posted:Have they announced patches? Or anything? https://twitter.com/SaintsRow/status/1570182832604987394
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Sep 15, 2022 05:37
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Soonmot posted:PC? I haven't had any freezeups or animation fuckups since the last patch on PS5 Only had one freeze but it's a non-stop, never ending parade spawns never triggering that can only be fixed by exiting and restarting the game. For at least two missions I nailed it down to Notoriety. Gain Notoriety and hit a trigger to start the mission whatever and it clears Notoriety, then certain enemies never spawn. The mission where you have to burn files at the storage unit place, the helicopters would never spawn if gained Notoriety on the way to saving Jim.
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Sep 15, 2022 08:36
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